Debian

Debian is one of the most respected distributions because of their "Social Contract", its support of freedom, its quality, and its history.
The debian distribution is the starting point for other distributions, including the popular Ubuntu and LinuxMint.

The AMD64 platform is the common 64-bit version for AMD and Intel processors (iCore, etc.). IA64 is only for Intel-only Architecture 64-bit processors, meaning if you don't know that you need this, you want AMD64.

The single disc install option will install a base system with GNOME or KDE - for all options, all packages, the all discs option is recommended.

The source code set contains source code packages only - it cannot be used to install / use Debian directly.

Notes on Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 (Jessie)

After almost 24 months of constant development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 8 (code name "Jessie"), which will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and of the Debian Long Term Support team.
"Jessie" ships with a new default init system, systemd. The systemd suite provides many exciting features such as faster boot times, cgroups for services, and the possibility of isolating part of the services. The sysvinit init system is still available in "Jessie".
The UEFI ("Unified Extensible Firmware Interface") support introduced in "Wheezy" has also been greatly improved in Jessie. This includes workarounds for many known firmware bugs, support for UEFI on 32-bit systems, and support for 64-bit kernels with 32-bit UEFI firmware (with the latter being included only on our amd64/i386 "multi-arch" installation media).
Since the previous release, members of the Debian project have also made important improvements to our supporting services. One of these is a browsable view of all source code shipped in Debian currently available at sources.debian.net. Of course, with over 20,000 source packages, it can be quite daunting to locate the right file. Therefore, we are also very pleased to present Debian Code Search, available at codesearch.debian.net. Both services are complemented by a completely rewritten and more responsive package tracking system.
This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as: Apache 2.4.10, Asterisk 11.13.1, GIMP 2.8.14, an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 3.14, GNU Compiler Collection 4.9.2, Icedove 31.6.0 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), Iceweasel 31.6.0esr (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), KDE Plasma Workspaces and KDE Applications 4.14.2, LibreOffice 4.3.3, Linux 3.16.7-ckt9, MariaDB 10.0.16 and MySQL 5.5.42, Nagios 3.5.1, OpenJDK 7u75, Perl 5.20.2, PHP 5.6.7, PostgreSQL 9.4.1, Python 2.7.9 and 3.4.2, Samba 4.1.17, Tomcat 7.0.56 and 8.0.14, Xen Hypervisor 4.4.1, the Xfce 4.10 desktop environment, more than 43,000 other ready-to-use software packages, built from nearly 20,100 source packages.
With this broad selection of packages and its traditional wide architecture support, Debian once again stays true to its goal of being the universal operating system. It is suitable for many different use cases: from desktop systems to netbooks; from development servers to cluster systems; and for database, web, or storage servers. At the same time, additional quality assurance efforts like automatic installation and upgrade tests for all packages in Debian's archive ensure that "Jessie" fulfills the high expectations that users have of a stable Debian release.
A total of ten architectures are supported: 32-bit PC / Intel IA-32 (i386), 64-bit PC / Intel EM64T / x86-64 (amd64), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc for older hardware and ppc64el for the new 64-bit (little-endian)), MIPS (mips (big-endian) and mipsel (little-endian)), IBM S/390 (64-bit s390x) and for ARM, armel and armhf for old and new 32-bit hardware, plus arm64 for the new 64-bit "AArch64" architecture.

Notes on Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (Wheezy)

This new version of Debian includes various interesting features such as multiarch support, several specific tools to deploy private clouds, an improved installer, and a complete set of multimedia codecs and front-ends which remove the need for third-party repositories.
Multiarch support, one of the main release goals for Wheezy, will allow Debian users to install packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. This means that you can now, for the first time, install both 32- and 64-bit software on the same machine and have all the relevant dependencies correctly resolved, automatically.
In addition, for the first time, Debian supports installation and booting using UEFI for new 64-bit PCs (amd64), although there is no support for Secure Boot yet.
This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as: Apache 2.2.22, Asterisk 1.8.13.1, GIMP 2.8.2, LibreOffice 3.5.4, Linux 3.2, MySQL 5.5.30,
PostgreSQL 9.1, X.Org 7.7, plus more than 36,000 other ready-to-use software packages, built from nearly 17,500 source packages.
With this broad selection of packages, Debian once again stays true to its goal of being the universal operating system. It is suitable for many different use cases: from desktop systems to netbooks; from development servers to cluster systems; and for database, web, or storage servers. At the same time, additional quality assurance efforts like automatic installation and upgrade tests for all packages in Debian's archive ensure that Wheezy fulfills the high expectations that users have of a stable Debian release. It is rock solid and rigorously tested.
You can install Debian on computers ranging from handheld systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A total of nine architectures are supported: 32-bit PC / Intel IA-32 (i386), 64-bit PC / Intel EM64T / x86-64 (amd64), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Sun/Oracle SPARC (sparc), MIPS (mips (big-endian) and mipsel (little-endian)), Intel Itanium (ia64), IBM S/390 (31-bit s390 and 64-bit s390x), and ARM EABI (armel for older hardware and armhf for newer hardware using hardware floating-point).

Notes on Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 (Squeeze)

This new release of Debian again comes with a lot more software than its predecessor lenny; the distribution includes over 10352 new packages, for a total of over 29050 packages. Most of the software in the distribution has been updated: over 15436 software packages (this is 67% of all packages in lenny). Also, a significant number of packages (over 4238, 18% of the packages in lenny) have for various reasons been removed from the distribution. You will not see any updates for these packages and they will be marked as 'obsolete' in package management front-ends.

With this release, Debian GNU/Linux updates from X.Org 7.3 to X.Org 7.5.

Debian GNU/Linux again ships with several desktop applications and environments. Among others it now includes the desktop environments GNOME 2.30[1], KDE 4.4.5, Xfce 4.6.2, and LXDE 0.5.0. Productivity applications have also been upgraded, including the office suites OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 and KOffice 2.2.1 as well as GNUcash 2.2.9, GNUmeric 1.10.8 and Abiword 2.8.2.

Updates of other desktop applications include the upgrade to Evolution 2.30.3 and Pidgin 2.7.3. The Mozilla suite has also been updated: iceweasel (version 3.5.13) is the unbranded Firefox web browser and icedove (version 3.0.7) is the unbranded Thunderbird mail client.

Notes on Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny)

Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of twelve processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments. It also features compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.2 of the LSB.

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny adds support for Marvell's Orion platform which is used in many storage devices. Supported storage devices include the QNAP Turbo Station series, HP Media Vault mv2120, and Buffalo Kurobox Pro. Additionally, Lenny now supports several Netbooks, in particular the Eee PC by Asus. Lenny also contains the build tools for Emdebian which allow Debian source packages to be cross-built and shrunk to suit embedded ARM systems.

With the integration of X.Org 7.3 the X server autoconfigures itself with most hardware. Newly introduced packages allow the full support of NTFS filesystems and the use of most multimedia keys out of the box. Support for Adobe® Flash® format files is available via the swfdec or Gnash plugins. Overall improvements for notebooks have been introduced, such as out of the box support of CPU frequency scaling. For leisure time several new games have been added, including puzzle games as well as first-person shooters. Also notable is the introduction of goplay, a graphical games browser offering filters, search, screenshots and descriptions for games in Debian.

The installation process for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 has been improved in many ways: among many other improvements, support for installation from more than one CD or DVD has been restored, firmware required by some devices can be loaded by using removable media, and installations via Braille display are supported. The installer boot process has also received much attention: a graphical menu can be used to choose front-ends and desktop environments, and to select expert or rescue mode. The installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated to 63 languages.

Notes on Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (Etch)

Using a now fully integrated installation process, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 comes with
out-of-the-box support for encrypted partitions. This release introduces a newly developed
graphical frontend to the installation system supporting scripts using composed characters
and complex languages; the installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated
to 58 languages.
This release includes a number of updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment
3.5.5a (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.14, the Xfce 4.4 desktop
environment, the GNUstep desktop 5.2, X.Org 7.1, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4a, GIMP 2.2.13, Iceweasel
(an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3), Icedove (an unbranded version of Mozilla
Thunderbird 1.5), Iceape (an unbranded version of Mozilla Seamonkey 1.0.8), PostgreSQL 8.1.8,
MySQL 5.0.32, GNU Compiler Collection 4.1.1, Linux kernel version 2.6.18, Apache 2.2.3, Samba
3.0.24, Python 2.4.4 and 2.5, Perl 5.8.8, PHP 4.4.4 and 5.2.0, Asterisk 1.2.13, and more than
18,000 other ready to use software packages.

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